News

The lack of a senior responsible owner for the West Coast Rail franchise project was the “biggest problem” behind the failure of the bidding process, Sam Laidlaw told the House of Commons Transport Committee yesterday.

The Ministry of Defence is struggling to build a financial management system that determines a “single version of the financial truth” and there is a “high risk to delivery” of the department’s strategy for setting out clear management information (MI), according to the Defence Review Annual Report published yesterday by Lord Levene.

The Ministry of Defence is struggling to build a financial management system that determines a “single version of the financial truth” and there is a “high risk to delivery” of the department’s strategy for setting out clear management information (MI), according to the Defence Review Annual Report published yesterday by Lord Levene.

A set of new ‘masterclasses’ that aim to help the voluntary and community sector (VCS) to secure public sector contracts were announced by the Cabinet Office  last week.

Nearly £50m was saved in 2011-12 compared to 2009-10 by cutting the use of fossil fuels and reducing waste and water consumption across Whitehall, the Cabinet Office announced last week.

The sale of Ministry of Defence (MoD) radio frequences could raise £1bn, the Financial Times reported this week. Two radio bands are being sold, with two industry experts telling the newspaper that each is likely to net £4-500m.

o2 Arena, London

The Welsh Government has entered into negotiations to nationalise Cardiff Airport, first minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, announced yesterday.

A primary school teacher laments the loss of centralised standards.

The Department for Education (DfE) should not make the National Pupil Database (NPD) available to the public, according to the Open Data Institute – a publicly-funded organisation dedicated to helping departments publish information and the private sector benefit from public data.

Pruned hard, the civil service will be lost without new skills.

The government is not sufficiently prioritising some fields of government IT work that could produce big savings, delegates at an IT conference last December said in an electronic survey.

Last week the Civil Service Commission published its response to two proposals in the Civil Service Reform Plan for greater ministerial involvement in senior civil service appointments. The most discussed proposal would give ministers the right to choose their permanent secretaries from a number of candidates judged suitable by a selection panel. In our response, the commission actively supports the involvement of ministers in permanent secretary competitions and has agreed some further changes to strengthen that involvement. But we stop short of giving ministers a choice. That would, we believe, be a step too far.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has paused his plans to allow ministers to choose their permanent secretary from an approved shortlist, after the Civil Service Commission intervened to propose a compromise arrangement.

Janice Hartley and Sue Moore started their roles as directors of delivery for Universal Credit at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) on 5 November, replacing Steve Dover, the previous director of programme delivery. Hartley was previously the DWP’s interim service delivery director for corporate IT, and Moore was its fraud and error programme director. A DWP spokesperson told CSW the roles were not “direct replacements” for Dover because “the scope of the roles of senior staff has changed” as the project moves from the design to delivery phase.

The government has repeatedly come a cropper when outsourcing work, but the number of outsourced projects is only going to grow. Mark Smulian attends a round table on how the civil service can become a shrewder customer

The Social Mobility Strategy is facing a gale-force headwind

We were both honoured to attend and be part of the Civil Service Awards last month. From Stranraer to Bournemouth, the outstanding work of civil servants was celebrated – whether they’d delivered roads or the Olympics, run prisons or Jobcentres. In one evening we recognised the very best of the civil service and left in no doubt that we lead some of the most talented professionals.

The government’s new Open Data Institute launched yesterday with an additional $750,000 (£466,000) investment from philanthropic body the Omidyar Network, run by the founder of eBay.

Civil service head Sir Bob Kerslake has told CSW that the turnover of permanent secretaries in the past two years has been too high, and that “in an ideal world” there would not be as much change.

The civil service makes a “huge contribution” to serving the country and its good work should be recognised, Margaret Hodge, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), said at the Civil Service Awards on 22 November.

The Big Lottery Fund (BLF) and the Institute for Government (IfG) are entering into a partnership to build links between civil servants and the frontline workers who deliver services to vulnerable people.

The prime minister’s plan to scrap Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs) is “very worrying,” according to Mencap, the charity for people with learning disabilities.

A new Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is to become fully operational in April 2014, under plans to merge the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission.